Downward causation and supervenience: the non-reductionist’s extra argument for incompatibilism

Agent-causal theories of free will, which rely on a non-reductionist account of the agent, have traditionally been associated with libertarianism. However, some authors have recently argued in favor of compatibilist agent-causal accounts. In this essay, I will show that such accounts cannot avoid serious problems of implausibility or incoherence. A careful analysis of the implications of non-reductionist views of the agent (event-causal or agent-causal as they may be) reveals that such views necessarily imply either the denial of the principle of supervenience or the assumption of bottom-level indeterminism. I will contend that the former alternative comes at a high cost, while the latter is quite plausible. Therefore, providing that they accept the condition of the truth of indeterminism, non-reductionist accounts of the agent do not have to contradict our scientific worldview. Interestingly, while they should be taken seriously by anyone who is concerned with the passivity of the agent’s role under a reductionist scenario, non-reductivist accounts end up contributing an extra incompatibilist argument to the free will debate.     

NON‐RELATIVE REASONS AND HUMEAN THOUGHT: IF WHAT IS A REASON FOR YOU IS A REASON FOR ME,WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE THE HUMEAN?

Abstract: A variety of strategies have been used to oppose the influential Humean thesis that all of an agent's reasons for action are provided by the agent's current wants. Among these strategies is the attempt to show that it is a conceptual truth that reasons for action are non‐relative. I introduce the notion of a basic reason‐giving consideration and show that the non‐relativity thesis can be understood as a corollary of the more fundamental thesis that basic reason‐giving considerations are generalizable. I then consider the relationship between the generalizability thesis and the Humean thesis that all of an agent's reasons for action are provided by the agent's current wants. I argue that, contrary to a common assumption, there is a subtle and clearly motivated version of the Humean thesis that does not deny, and so is not threatened by, the generalizability thesis.     

Intrinsicalism and Conditionalism about Final Value

The paper distinguishes between two rival views about the nature of final value (i.e. the value something has for its own sake) — intrinsicalism and conditionalism. The former view (which is the one adopted by G.E. Moore and several later writers) holds that the final value of any F supervenes solely on features intrinsic to F, while the latter view allows that the final value of F may supervene on features non-intrinsic to F. Conditionalism thus allows the final value of F to vary according to the context in which F appears. Given the plausible assumption that there is an intimate tie between final values and appropriate attitudinal responses, it appears that conditionalism is the better approach for mainly the following three reasons: First, intrinsicalism is too indiscriminate, which makes it subject to what I call ‘location problems’ of final value. I illustrate this problem by discussing alleged examples of Moorean organic unities. Second, intrinsicalism evokes symptoms of ‘evaluative schizophrenia’. Third, considerations of theoretical economy tell in favour of conditionalism. Thereafter I respond to some recent challenges to conditionalism. An appendix surveys some meritorious implications that conditionalism offers for various substantial versions of such structurally different views about value as monism, pluralism, and particularism.     

BETWEEN PHYSICALISM AND MENTALISM: PHILIP CLAYTON ON MIND AND EMERGENCE

Abstract. Philip Clayton's work on emergence is a valuable contribution to the fields of religion, science, and philosophy. I focus on three narrow but extremely important areas of Clayton's work. First, Clayton deems that Terrence Deacon's emergence theory is difficult to accept because it is constructed from thermodynamics, thereby rendering it unable to address phenomenological issues. I examine Deacon's theory and show that development from a physics base is warranted. Furthermore, Clayton does not convincingly demonstrate that such a constructive approach is necessarily incapable of attending to mental phenomena or offer an alternative that explains the causal power of a physically nonconstructible mental realm. Second, I argue that Clayton's notion of emergentist supervenience for comprehending the mental/physical relation is unnecessarily redundant and problematic in relation to causal power. Third, I explore Clayton's alternative use of agent causation to make sense of mental properties having causal power in the world. His effort to resolve emergence difficulties by appealing to phenomenology receives primary attention. Clayton's use of emergence theory is an important contribution to the religion‐and‐science community, and I encourage further dialogue on the exchange that Clayton commences.     

SPECIES OF EMERGENCE

Abstract. The category of emergence has come to be of considerable importance to the science‐and‐religion dialogue. It has become clear that the term is used in different ways by different authors, with important implications. In this article I examine the criteria used to state that something is emergent and the different interpretations of those criteria. In particular, I argue similarly to Philip Clayton that there are three broad ranges of interpretation of emergence: reductive, nonreductive, and radical. Although all three criteria have their place, I suggest that the category of radical emergence is important both for science and theology.     

层次,形式与实在

Scientific progress in the 20th century has shown that the structure of the world is hierarchical. A philosophical analysis of the hierarchy will bear obvious significance for metaphysics and philosophy in general. Jonathan Schaffer’s paper, “Is There a Fundamental Level?”, provides a systematic review of the works in the field, the difficulties for various versions of fundamentalism, and the prospect for the third option, i.e., to treat each level as ontologically equal. The purpose of this paper is to provide an argument for the third option. The author will apply Aristotle’s theory of matter and form to the discussion of the hierarchy and develop a theory of form realism, which will grant every level with “full citizenship in the republic of being.” It constitutes an argument against ontological and epistemological reductionism. A non-reductive theory of causation is also developed against the fundamental theory of causation.     

Representationalism,Symmetrical Supervenience and Identity

According to some representationalists (M. Tye, Ten problems of consciousness, MIT Press, Massachusetts, USA, 1995; W.G. Lycan, Consciousness and experience, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 1996; F. Dretske, Naturalising the mind, MIT Press, Massachusetts, USA 1995), qualia are identical to external environmental states or features. When one perceives a red rose for instance, one is visually representing the actual redness of the rose. The represented redness of the rose is the actual redness of the rose itself. Thus redness is not a property of one’s experience but an externally constituted property of the perceived physical object. In this sense, qualia are out there, in the external world. Here, I argue that the main representationalist arguments to this effect, if successful, establish no more than a symmetrical supervenience relation between representational content and qualia, and that a supervenience relation alone (albeit symmetrical) doesn’t suffice for identity. This supervenience thesis between qualia and representational content leaves open the question as to the essential nature of qualia.

Charity, Supervenience, and Skepticism

In a number of articles Donald Davidson has argued that the charitable nature of his method of radical interpretation rules out the possibility of massive error and thus refutes Cartesian skepticism. The diversity of such arguments and the suggestions that are all being made under the name of the principle of charity have prompted a large body of conflicting responses, adding only to the obscurity of the issues that are generally associated with the question of skepticism. In this paper I propose to consider the debate in a new light by reconstruing the principle of charity as a supervenience constraint on belief attribution. This would help explain some of the puzzling features of Davidson's arguments, like the idea of an omniscient interpreter, and the ensuing commentaries. Having provided an analysis of the limitations of Davidson's arguments, I shall then suggest an alternative explanation of the purported necessity of the principle of charity. Finally, having construed the principle of charity as a supervenience constraint, I shall examine what consequences this construal has for the logical status of the principle itself and its alleged epistemic potentials.     

Reviews

Books reviewed:
Robert A. Segal, Theorizing About Myth
Christopher Southgate, Celia Deane-Drummond, Paul D. Murray, Michael Robert Negus, Lawrence Osborn, Michael Poole, Jacqui Stewart, and Fraser Watts, (eds.) God, Humanity and the Cosmos: A Textbook in Science and Religion
Bryan S. Rennie, Reconstructing Eliade: Making Sense of Religion     

EVOLUTION AND SUBJECTIVITY

Evolutionary theory is becoming an all‐encompassing form of explanation in many branches of philosophy. However, emergence theory uses the concept of self‐organization to support yet alter traditional evolutionary explanation. Biologist Stuart Kauffman suggests that the new science will need to tell stories, not simply as a heuristic device but as part of its fundamental task. This claim is reminiscent of C. S. Peirce's criticism of the doctrine of necessity. Peirce's suggestions reference Hegel, and this essay draws out this Hegelian background, addressing the question of subjectivity and issuing some Hegelian reminders so that such evolutionary and emergent theories will consider the implication of this research program on philosophy of mind. The primary focus is on two post‐Kantian, neo‐Hegelian thinkers in contemporary philosophy who deal with this problem: John McDowell and Robert Brandom.